--- Lawrance Lee <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Howdy group, > > I recently bought a 4GB microdrive for my EOS 10D. > > When I did a chkdsk (from Windows 2000) onto the > drive, it says FAT32. > I then did a chkdsk on my 1GB compact flash card and > it is just plain FAT. > > What's the difference, if any between the two > different FAT formats? > Should I format my 1GB compact flash card to FAT32? >
Basically, FAT (16 bit addressing): It is the older brother of FAT32 wherein the file is *always* stored in multiples of 32KBytes (yes even if the file is 1byte in size it will occupy a minimum of 32KBytes). The maximum number of such "storage units" (or in technical jargon - clusters) is limited to 65536 such clusters (because of the fact that only 16 bits can be used to address any single cluster). Hence the maximum disk size that will be usable in this case is 32K x 64K = 2GB. Beyond that the disk will need to be partitioned (or others means to extend the capacity with larger cluster sizes etc.) FAT32 (32 bit addressing): Designed mainly to overcome the limitatiosn posed by the 16 bit addressable FAT system, it enables upto 4 TBytes of storage and cluster sizes as small as 4KBytes and support for long file names and some other improvements. If your card is not above 2GB, you do not need to format it in FAT32 just to be able to use it. OTOH, even a 1GB can be formatted in FAT32 with the advantage that at most < 4KBytes of storage will be wasted in storing any potential file (vs < 32KB in FAT). However, the device which is going use such a formnatted drive must be able to read and use a card formatted in FAT32. - Harman __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Finance Tax Center - File online. File on time. http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html * **** ******* *********************************************************** * For list instructions, including unsubscribe, see: * http://www.a1.nl/phomepag/markerink/eos_list.htm ***********************************************************
